A/N: I didn't want to leave you guys waiting on that evil cliffhanger for too long, so here's chapter two. I'm gonna keep going with the Narc lyrics because honestly I feel like that song fits Nicky particularly well. Thank you for all your kind reviews – I hope I haven't ruined you all too much with that cliffhanger and the brutal element to this story.
Don't give up your lover tonight
They take her on a stretcher. It could have just as easily been a body bag.
She's limp and semi-conscious and her skin is white as snow, sweaty, coated in blood. Nicky holds her hand as far as they'll let her, and they practically have to pry her fingers away to get her to let go, and then she's gone.
And Nicky's alone.
She's not really, but at the same time, she is. She's aware of the crowd that's gathered, can hear their voices, but it's all a blur. She drops back down to the place where it happened, where blood is pooling on the linoleum flooring, and her fingers wrap around Lorna's towel that has gone forgotten, abandoned under her lifeless body. They're going to investigate. People will be here any minute, shutting off this part of corridor, treating it as a crime scene; she knows the drill. But it's not just the same old, because it's Lorna and the towel she's clutching is Lorna's, and the blood she's sitting in is Lorna's.
Her arms are covered in drying blood. It's up her fingernails, smeared down her face, matted in her hair, coating her khakis so fully that her skin is probably stained pink underneath. Her shoes are covered in it. She sinks against the wall, and finally allows herself to cry, allows the situation to sink in, to fill every part of her. And it hurts. It really fucking hurts, like nothing she's ever felt before.
She looks up, and Red's standing there, and she has tears in her eyes.
"Come. We need to get you cleaned up."
Nicky vaguely hears the conversation between Caputo and Red as Piper's getting her to her feet, but she's not concentrating, the words don't register. Caputo's saying they need to talk, Red's saying she's not talking to anyone in this state.
Red and Piper practically carry her to the showers, and even then she's too out of it to get in by herself. She stands there, covered in the blood of the woman she loves, and shakes and cries, digging her fingers into her own skin. The same mantra is going over and over in her head: why her? Why not me? Why would anybody hurt her? Why?
"Nicky, my beautiful little girl, I know it hurts. I know. But you need to get out of these clothes and into some fresh ones, you hear me? You aren't going to be any help to Lorna like this."
Her name sends a new shiver through Nicky's body, but it half snaps her out of it, and she nods her head, tries to will her body to move.
"Here, let me help you," Piper says softly, and she starts to peel the blood-soaked clothes off Nicky's body, casting glances at Red as she does so. Any other time and Nicky would be making a billion different jokes, in her element at the idea of the prissy blonde undressing her, not to mention getting her hands dirty as she did it, but jokes are the last thing on her mind. She can't stop the image of Lorna from repeating itself in her head, and she feels like she's going to be sick, and suddenly it's too much to keep in.
Fortunately, her legs work when she needs them to, and she hauls herself away from Piper, lands against the toilet in the nearest cubicle with such force that it's going to bruise, and promptly empties her stomach's contents into the bowl. Her fingers grip the toilet so tight that when she lets go, there's red marks all the way around. She stares at her hands for a long time, her vision going blurred, and then she throws up again.
Finally, when she's sure she's finished, she drags herself back to the shower. For the first time, she notices that Piper has mascara tracks down her face. Somehow that just makes it all the more real.
"I can wash myself," Nicky says, but her voice comes out broken, unrecognisable.
"I'll go get you some clean clothes," Piper offers after a moment, and Red nods promptly, doesn't look at her as she leaves them.
"Come on, ma, I'm a big girl."
Red's expression doesn't change as she stares squarely into Nicky's eyes, "we'll get her. We'll get the bitch who did this to her, you hear me Nicky? We'll fucking get her."
The worst part is that they won't tell her anything.
She's made to sit in this tiny room that's not entirely dissimilar to the SHU whilst she waits for the detectives to get to speaking to her, and they won't fucking tell her anything.
Lorna could be dead for all she knows.
She kicks the leg of the metal table she's sitting at in frustration. Nobody comes. No CO to threaten to give her a shot, no Red to smack her around the head.
She still has Lorna's blood under her nails, even after scrubbing her hands six times. It won't go away. She feels like maybe she understands how Lady Macbeth felt. Lorna's death, or near-death, is on her hands in the non-literal sense anyway. Because she didn't protect her well enough, because she didn't look after her, because she couldn't stop the big bad world from sucking her into one of its black holes and spitting her back out as damaged goods.
The rational part of her brain knows that it isn't really her fault, that she can't be to blame for something she could never have seen coming, but she's never really been able to use logic when it comes to Lorna.
"Eyyy, you ever going to fucking come back for me?" Nicky yells at the closed door, running her hands agitatedly through her damp hair.
She's met with silence.
She hates men in suits on principal, and she knows in her heart that these idiots aren't going to catch whoever shanked Lorna, and that she's wasting precious time being stuck in here. It's procedure. Procedure is bullshit. Procedure is what let Pornstache back into the prison. Procedure is what let Tricia's death be swept under the carpet as a suicide. Procedure is what lost Red the kitchen. It's never worked out in their favour before, and it certainly won't now.
She can't stop thinking about Lorna. About her blood-stained fingers curling into the fabric of Nicky's khakis, the fear in her dark brown eyes, the lipstick smudged across her chin, the feel of her clammy, cold skin in Nicky's arms.
She's gone through the scenario in her head over and over and over again, still can't make sense of any of it.
Why would somebody want to take Lorna out? Why would anyone actually see Lorna as a threat?
Nicky's always known that Litchfield is fucked up but this is a whole new category of crazy, and she can't get her head around the fact that somebody she lives and breathes with every single day would want Lorna of all people dead. Gossip is one thing, something that she's come to expect of people who have nothing better to do, but she never in a million years considered any of it to be an actual threat to Lorna.
She's about ready to start kicking up another load of fuss when the door finally opens, and two white guys in suits enter, sitting down across from her. They have a manilla folder which they open on the desk, and the bulkier looking guy has a cheap yellow lined notepad. Nicky inwardly groans; there's no way dumb and dumber are going to catch whoever did this.
They ask her a bunch of mundane questions, try to delve further into her friendship with Lorna, practically accuse her of having motive to hurt her, and eventually, let her go.
She doesn't appreciate the way they refer to Lorna in the past tense, but they do assure her she's still alive. She's in critical condition in hospital. Not that it does much to ease her mind.
As she trudges back to her bunk, Nicky knows everyone's staring at her, whispering about her, but she doesn't pay attention to any of it. She feels numb. A different kind of numb from the numb drugs used to give her, a different kind of numb than going cold turkey brought with it. Her body alternates between feeling too heavy, and feeling empty.
She walks past Lorna's cube without even a glance towards it, is glad when none of her friends try to talk to her. When she reaches her bunk, she sits down heavily, almost misses the note that's lying across her pillow.
Act one always ends with Bernardo on the ground.
She might not be the West Side Story enthusiast that Lorna was (is. Is is is is is), but she knows enough to know what this note's fucking about, and she immediately feels a rage boiling up inside of her. She punches the wall, turns to Norma who is sitting awkwardly on her bunk across the cube.
"You see who left this?" Norma shakes her head. "I swear to god I will fucking kill whoever did this, you hear me? You... you hear me?"
She starts off shouting – vaguely hears Bennett mutter an awkward, half-hearted 'that's enough, inmate', but it feels far away – but crumbles, scrunching the paper into a ball and collapsing against the wall, her knees tight to her chest. Tears are spilling down her cheeks and her chest feels tight and she can still taste bile from the last time she was sick. She squeezes her eyes closed, punches the wall again, doesn't even notice when her knuckles start to bleed. Everything is so fucked up.
When she opens her eyes, Norma's hovering over the bed, her eyes soft and sad. Nicky stares at her for a moment, then notices what she's holding. Taking the grey material from the older woman's hands, she doesn't even need to look at the label to know who it belongs to, holds it close to her face, begins to cry again, sobs shaking her body. She mumbles a thank you, and Norma gently rests a hand on her shoulder before going back to her own bunk.
"Who the fuck shanks someone and then makes a musical theatre reference, like that shit's fucked up yo."
Nicky goes to the library in the hopes of some peace and quiet. She thinks she might just lie down one of the aisles and blast her radio at full volume for a couple of hours, tune out from the world. Breakfast was fucking awful (Lorna's favourite meal of the day; Nicky couldn't even bring herself to touch her waffle) and she doesn't want to deal with anyone for the rest of the day, but it's Sunday so the chapel is occupied. She had hoped people would get the fucking message to leave her alone, but no such luck. She's in the library for barely a minute when Poussey appears, and whilst she knows her heart's in the right place, Nicky really isn't in the mood.
"It's all fucked up," she says, hoarsely.
"I know, man. I mean, who would wanna hurt your girl? Like, shit, what's she ever done to anyone?" the solemn look on her face is actually somewhat comforting, and Nicky finds a tiny smile raising the corner of her mouth an inch before it disappears.
"Haven't you heard? Lorna's apparently the only person in this place to have ever committed a fucking crime. At least that's what you'd think from how people have been talking about her."
The look that drifts across Poussey's features may be one of guilt, regret, but Nicky doesn't care much to pull her up on it, just shrugs, dropping to the floor and sitting against a bookshelf. She's surprised when Poussey joins her. More so when she realises she's not as irritated by it as she should be.
"Is she doin' okay?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. These assholes won't fucking tell me anything. She could be dead for all I know."
Saying the words out loud make it all the more real and she feels the bile rise in her throat again, the tears prick at her eyes.
"Nah, that girl's tougher than she looks, y'know? She'll pull through."
Nicky hopes so. She really really hopes so, because the thought of blindly stumbling through life without her is too much to handle, and she thinks she'd rather die than attempt it, and that's how she knows she's in too deep.